In Time

Years from now, when they write about the movies of the Great Recession, "In Time" will deserve a serious look. A sci-fi thriller about a future America in which time is currency and immortal youth can be bought, it's also an extended metaphor about the state of the economy. The sentiments, which are never made explicit, are radical, and the emotions are strong. You can make all the documentaries you want about the banking crisis, and yet somehow "In Time" says it all with more force.

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In this dystopian world, everyone stops aging at 25. That's the good news. (Justin Timberlake walks into the kitchen one morning and says "Hi, Mom" to Olivia Wilde, an actress in her 20s.) The bad news is that from 25 on, the clock is ticking. Everyone starts off with a year in the bank, but you have to use time to buy everything - a couple of days to make a loan payment, a few minutes for a cup of coffee. Long before the calendar year is up, most people end up "living day to day," working long hours just to make enough time to survive.

Writer-director Andrew Niccol takes this central conceit and thinks it through meticulously. There are time cops and time bandits. The poor have to worry about running out of time, but the rich have to worry about the poor stealing their time, something that's very easy to do. (Apparently, flashing a decade on your arm is even worse than waving an iPhone around.) What's more, the rich have a spiritual problem. Because they can live forever, there's no pressing reason to do anything.

As Will, a boy from the poor side of the tracks, Timberlake stumbles into a major gift of time on the very day that he becomes politically radicalized. So he goes to the wealthy sector, where hotel rooms cost two months a night, and he meets people who believe wholeheartedly in a system that makes a few people rich but literally sucks the life out of everyone else. Then things go haywire, and Will finds himself doing what Logan did in "Logan's Run." He's running.

In any other era, "In Time" would have been a satisfying picture. Not for one moment does Niccol compromise this serious sci-fi world, and yet he hits all the marks for crowd-pleasing mass entertainment: "In Time" never stops moving. It devises compelling motives for all of its characters and creates an intense rooting interest for the protagonist. It also pairs Timberlake nicely with Amanda Seyfried, who plays the daughter of a millionaire time tycoon (Vincent Kartheiser of TV's "Mad Men"). For some reason - any reason is fine - Niccol had Seyfried made up to emphasize her uncanny resemblance to the Danish actress Anna Karina.

But coming now, today, "In Time" is not just satisfying. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's important, because that would overstate it, but it certainly feels like part of the national conversation. It arrives in theaters at a time when people are camped out in New York saying the same things as the people in the movie. It's weird the way films often anticipate the near future.